President George Bush talks about a "Third Awakening," but
he has his history wrong

It was America's 1960s Awakening that united Protestants, Catholics
and Jews, and cemented our support for Israel.
(19-Sep-2006)

Summary

William G. McLoughlin and other historians have long recognized
America's "Great Awakenings" as times of great social
turmoil and religious revival. Each Awakening resolved the turmoil by
setting new priorities for the nation, and the most recent awakening
solidified our support for Israel. Awakenings are a pillar of
Generational Dynamics, and they occur in every nation and society
throughout history. The most recent Awakenings among Muslim nations
have solidified their desire to eliminate Israel.

"The President mentioned that he is struck by the number of
people he meets who tell him they are praying for him. He
jokingly noted, “Now maybe the only people who pray in America
come to my events,” but he wonders if there is evidence of a
Third Awakening saying, “It feels like it to me.” He talked about
the two constituencies that faithfully supported President
Lincoln, noting that he had recently read extensively about the
former President and his own policies aren’t based on his insights
(nor obviously does he consider himself another Lincoln). Bush
explained that Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious
people from the Second Awakening “who saw life in terms of good
and evil” and who agreed [with] Lincoln that slavery was evil,
and the Union soldiers who Lincoln had “great affection and
admiration for.”

About the current situation, he added, “A lot of people in
America see this as a confrontation between good and evil,
including me.” He kept coming back to how cultures change, both in
America and overseas. “Cultures do change and ideological
struggles are won.” “There was a stark change between the culture
of the ‘50’s and the 60’s—boom—and I think there’s change
happening here.” “It seems to me that there’s a Third
Awakening.”

Now, those of you who read this web site regularly know that America
was in a generational awakening era in the 1960s and 1970s, and is in a generational crisis period
today. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of entering an
awakening period now. As I've also said repeatedly, Iraq is
currently in a generational awakening era, one generation past the
Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, and that's why a civil war in Iraq is
impossible today, just as a civil war couldn't have occurred in the
America in the 1960s.

However, Bush's reference is to exactly the same "Second Awakening"
that forms one of the pillars of Generational Dynamics.

Historians have long recognized three Great Awakenings in American history, in the 1730s-40s, 1820s-30s, and 1890s-1900s,
respectively. These have been periods of tremendous social turmoil,
as well as religious revival among the public.

Many people believe that the social turmoil of the 1960s and 70s,
with the antiwar movement, the environmental movement, the women's
lib movement, and so forth, was unique in American history. But
nothing could be further from the truth. It was actually America's
fourth Awakening era.

The First Great Awakening in American history

The social turmoil that occurred in the 1730s and 40s was so great,
history has given it a name, "The Great Awakening in American
history."

The First Great Awakening (1730s-1740s) occurred at a time when the
American colonies were beginning to strongly condemn British control
of the colonies. Part of that was the official church, the Church of
England, called the Anglican Church in the colonies.

The Revolutionary War came in 1776, but the cultural revolution
against England occurred with the Great Awakening.

Starting in the 1730s, something brand new came about -- something we
recognize today in the form of "televangelists." Various preachers
went from city to city, telling thousands of rapt listeners that they
would be punished for their sinfulness, but could be saved by the
mercy of an all-powerful God. To take one example, John Wesley, born
in 1703, created the Methodist religion, and traveled on horseback
throughout the country for years, stopping along the way to preach
three or four sermons each day.

The Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s was not just a religious
revival; it was also an act of rebellion against the older generation
that favored control by the British in return for protection. By
rejecting the Anglican Church, the colonists were symbolically
rejecting British control.

The Second Great Awakening was so named because of the social turmoil
of the 1820s and 1830s.

Women's rights began to be seriously addressed at this time. And, as
with the previous awakening, there were heavy religious overtones,
with many evangelists holding "revivals," telling people how to revive
their sinful souls from damnation.

However, the greatest turmoil arose out of the slavery issue. Slave
rebellions began to develop, especially in those parts of the South
where blacks outnumbered whites. The fiercest was the 1831 revolt
led by black slave Nat Turner, who had been born in 1800. Turner's
rebellion resulted in the deaths or massacres of dozens of whites and
blacks, until Turner himself was hanged several weeks later.

This is the period that George Bush was talking about in his remarks.
The Civil War began in 1861, and many of the ideas about the evil
nature of slavery were born in during the Second Great Awakening,
30-40 years earlier.

Awakenings are crucial to Generational Dynamics. Awakening eras
occur in every society and nation, and they always occur midway
between two crisis wars. It often happens that great ideas (like new
religions) are born during Awakening eras, and are either actualized
or killed off during the next crisis era.

McLoughlin's five Anglo-American Awakenings

In his 1978 book, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, senior history professor William G.
McLoughlin identifies five awakenings in Anglo-American history. He
started with England's Puritan Awakening (1610-40), that began midway
between the Spanish Armada crisis war and the English civil war. He
then describes America's First, Second and Third Great Awakenings,
and also includes a Fourth Awakening -- beginning in the 1960s.

Generational Dynamics in turn draws on Strauss and Howe's work, and
extends the concepts of crisis wars and awakenings to all nations,
societies and tribes at all times in history.

McLoughlin summarized America's Awakenings as follows:

"Awakenings have been the shaping power of American culture
from its inception. The first settlers came to British North
America in the midst of the great Puritan Awakening in England
bringing with them the basic beliefs and values that provided the
original core of our culture.

Our Revolution came after the First Great Awakening on American
soil had made the thirteen colonies into a cohesive unit (e
pluribus unum), had given them a sense of unique nationality,
and had inspired them with the belief that they were, "and of
right ought to be," a free and independent people.

Shortly after the Constitution had launched the American republic,
a second era of religious revivals created the definitions of what
it meant to be "an American" and what the manifest destiny of the
new nation was. After the Civil War had cemented our sense of the
Union ("One nation, indivisible under God, with liberty and
justice for all"), the Third Great Awakening helped us to
understand the meaning of evolutionary science and industrial
progress and led us into the crusades "to make the world safe for
democracy" in 1917 and 1941.

Since 1960, Americans have been in the midst of their Fourth
Great Awakening (or their fifth, if we include the Puritan
Awakening). Once again we are in a difficult period of
reorientation, seeking an understanding of who we are, how we
relate to the rest of the universe, and what the meaning is of
the manifold crises that threaten our sense of order at home and
our commitments as a world power abroad. [This was published
in 1978. - JX]

Great awakenings (and the revivals that are part of them) are the
results, not of depressions, wars, or epidemics, but of critical
disjunctions in our self-understanding. They are not brief
outbursts of mass emotionalism by one group or another but
profound cultural transformations affecting all Americans and
extending over a generation or more. Awakenings begin in periods
of cultural distortion and grave personal stress, when we lose
faith in the legitimacy of our norms, the viability of our
institutions, and the authority of our leaders in church and
state. They eventuate in basic restructurings of our institutions
and redefinitions of our social goals.

Great awakenings are not periods of social neurosis (though they
begin in times of cultural confusion). They are times of
revitalization. They are therapeutic and cathartic, not
pathological. They restore our cultural verve and our
self-confidence, helping us to maintain faith in ourselves, our
ideals, and our "covenant with God" even while they compel us to
reinterpret that covenant in the light of new experience. Through
awakenings a nation grows in wisdom, in respect for itself, and
into more harmonious rdations with other peoples and the physical
universe. Without them our social order would cease to be
dynamic; our culture would wither, fragment, and dissolve in
confusion, as many civilizations have done before." [pp.
1-2]

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Awakening eras occur
in every nation and society throughout history.

Anthony Wallace and Revitalization Movements

In 1956, Anthony F. C. Wallace published a paper called
"Revitalization Movements" to describe how cultures change themselves.
A revitalization movement is a "deliberate, organized, conscious
effort by members of a group to create a new culture," and Wallace
describes at length the processes by which a revitalization movement
takes place.

Wallace derived his theory from studies of so-called primitive
peoples (preliterate and homogeneous), with particular attention to
the Iroquois revitalization movement led by Seneca religious leader
and "prophet" whose name was Handsome Lake (1735-1815). Wallace
believed that his revitalization model applies to movements as broad
and complex as the rise of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Wesleyan
Methodism.

In his 1978 book, McLoughlin took Wallace's work on Revitalization
Movements and extended it to "the complex, pluralistic, and highly
literate people of the United States."

In doing so, McLoughlin provided the roadmap for extending the
concept of Revitalization / Awakening eras so that they apply to any
nation or society in history:

"I propose, therefore, to view the five great awakenings that
have shaped and reshaped our culture since 1607 as periods of
fundamental ideological transformation necessary to the dynamic
growth of the nation in adapting to basic social, ecological,
psychological, and economic changes. The conversion of great
numbers of people from an old to a new world view (a new
ideological or religious understanding of their place in the
cosmos) is a natural and necessary aspect of social change. It
constitutes the awakening of a people caught in an outmoded,
dysfunctional world view to the necessity of convening their
mindset, their behavior, and their institutions to more relevant
or more functionally useful ways of understanding and coping with
the changes in the world they live in." [p. 8]

McLoughlin thus laid the groundwork for understanding that Awakening
eras are essential to any society, for they redefine the cultural
norms that will carry the society into and through the next crisis
war.

Hannah Arendt: Dread and austerity in late 1940s

The late 1940s were a time of great dread and austerity for
Americans. True, Americans were in a kind of emotional "high,"
having just beaten the Depression and beaten the Nazis. But after
two world wars, and a new world war against Communism apparently on
the horizon, it was felt that SOMETHING must be done to try to
prevent that. This gave rise to the Truman Doctrine.

Before proceeding to that, however, let's quote from the Preface to
Hannah Arendt's 1950 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, to
show the mood of the time:

"Two world wars in one generation, separated by an
uninterrupted chain of local wars and revolutions, followed by no
peace treaty for the vanquished and no respite for the victor,
have ended in the anticipation of a third World War between the
two remaining world powers. This moment of anticipation is like
the calm that settles after all hopes have died. We no longer
hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all
its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of five
continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the
violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all
that has still been spared. Under the most diverse conditions
and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same
phenomena -- homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness
to an unprecedented depth.

Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we
depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to
follow the rules of common sense and self-interest -- forces that
look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other
centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between
those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything
is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those
for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their
lives.

On the level of historical insight and political thought there
prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential
structure of all civilizations is at the breaking point.
Although it may seem better preserved in some parts of the world
than in others, it can nowhere provide the guidance to the
possibilities of the century, or an adequate response to its
horrors. Desperate hope and desperate fear often seem closer to
the center of such events than balanced judgment and measured
insight. The central events of our time are not less effectively
forgotten by those committed to a belief in an unavoidable doom,
than by those who have given themselves up to reckless optimism.

This book has been written against a background of both reckless
optimism and reckless despair. It holds that Progress and Doom
are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of
superstitition, not of faith." [[pp. vii-viii]]

Arendt's book proceeds to deconstruct the elements of Naziism and
Communism, with the purpose of trying to find ways to keep them from
happening again.

Truman Doctrine: America becomes world policeman

For President Harry Truman, this was more than just a philosophical
discussion. America had historically had an "isolationist" policy of
remaining aloof from foreign affairs, and hadn't even joined the
League of Nations when it was formed after World War I.

However, many people believed that this isolationist policy was one
of the causes of World War II, that the United State could (somehow)
have prevented WW II, perhaps by assassinating Hitler in 1935. (From
the point of view of Generational Dynamics, WW II would have occurred
with or without Hitler; furthermore, a proposal to assassinate Hitler
in 1935 would have met the same political and public fury that a
proposal to assassinate Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be
met with today. Nonetheless, the erroneous belief that Hitler
caused WW II was widespread in the late 1940s.)

"We have considered how the United Nations might assist in
[the Turkey / Greece] crisis. But the situation is an urgent one,
requiring immediate action, and the United Nations and its
related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the
kind that is required. ... As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is
to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply
it. We are the only country able to provide that help. ...

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently
had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The
Government of the United States has made frequent protests
against coercion and intimidation in violation of the Yalta
agreement in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that
in a number of other countries there have been similar
developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must
choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often
not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the
majority, and is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guarantees of
individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom
from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon
the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It
relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio,
fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own
destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and
financial aid which is essential to economic stability and
orderly political processes.

The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we
cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter
of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such
subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and
independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States
will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations."

President Truman made the additional point that, no matter how much
it cost the United States to provide this help, the cost would be far
less than the cost of World War II.

The Truman Doctrine led us into a series of difficult situations that
quickly went far beyond just financial help. When Russia began to
occupy North Korea, we fought the Korean War to a stalemate. When
China's allies in North Vietnam made it a goal to convert Southeast
Asia to Communism, we began sending troops into Vietnam. When Cuba
became a Communist country in 1960, we tried a pre-emptive invasion
to overthrow the government; the invasion failed, as it was based on
faulty CIA data, and became known as the "Bay of Pigs disaster."

The social turmoil began in earnest in the 1960s, as we tried to
answer the question: Exactly what IS our duty as "Policemen of the
World"?

Let's return to George Bush's remarks, referring to Abraham Lincoln's
strongest supporters in the Civil war as religious people from the
Second Awakening “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who
agreed [with] Lincoln that slavery was evil, and the Union soldiers
who Lincoln had “great affection and admiration for.”

Evangelical Christians, Catholics and Jews

The question that this article is addressing is this: How did the
1960s Awakening resolve the social turmoil of the 1960s, and what
people from this era are going to be George Bush's strongest
supporters today in the war against terror?

McLoughlin's book, published almost 30 years ago, provides guidance.
McLoughlin identifies two major cultural issues in America in the
1950s: the fear of Communism, which we've just discussed; and the
long-held feeling that America was not just a religious nation, but
was in fact a Protestant nation. In particular, Fundamentalist
Protestants believed that, as the millennium approached, God would
work through America to redeem mankind.

In the first half of the century, this created a cultural
contradiction with the ideal of religious equality because "many of
the poor, and many members of the working class, were recent
immigrants," and were Catholic or Jewish, according to McLoughlin.
Many native-born Americans supported restrictions on immigration
because "Catholic and Jewish immigrants needed to be 'uplifted' from
their 'backward' and 'superstitious' ignorance."

The Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution in 1917 caused these three groups
-- conservative Fundamentalists, Catholics and Jews -- to begin to
unite against a common enemy. McLoughlin adds:

"Fearing that Communism represented the Anti-Christ, aware
that it threatened not only private property and American
capitalism but the Judeo-Christian faith, many Fundamentalists
and Catholics found common ground in defending "the Cross and the
Flag" against this satanic foreign conspiracy. The creation of
the State of Israel in 1948 (following Hitler's efforts to
eliminate the Jews from human history) provided a link between
conservative Evangelical Christians and Jews. According to
Fundamentalist exegesis of the Bible, the redemption of the human
race included a role for the Jews; particularly noted was the
prediction that in "the latter days" a sign of the millennium
would be the return of the Jews to their homeland. Defense of
religious liberty, of capitalist hegemony in the world, of
"inalienable natural rights" against tyrannical fascists and
communists alike, also united Liberal Protestants and humanists
behind a common front with Catholics and Jews after 1950.

At this point Americans at last accepted the concept of a
pluralistic nation, at least to the extent, as Will Herberg put
it in 1955, of agreeing that "to be a Protestant, a Catholic, or
a Jew are today the alternative ways of being an American." [pp.
5-6]

This, from McLoughlin's 1978 book, is the central spiritual concept
that America's most recent Awakening era has brought us: Protestants
are united with Catholics and Jews, and the country is committed to
religious equality, and to the defense of religious liberty around
the world.

Muslim Awakenings and the link to Israel

As I said before, it's a principle of Generational Dynamics that
great ideas are born during Awakening eras and then actualized (or
killed) during Crisis eras.

We're now entering a generational Crisis era, and it's fair to ask
this question: What form will this new spiritual concept take in its
actualization?

There are many ways to approach this question, but none is more
important than the defense of Israel.

Religious equality is the norm in Western nations, but is NOT
the norm in Muslim nations. America's defense of democracy around
the world, a commitment adopted by President Truman after World War
II, also now implies defense of religious liberty around the world.
By contrast, Muslim nations may tolerate religious liberty, but their
commitment is to a Muslim world.

Muslim nations have also had their Awakening eras. For most of them,
this was in the 1930s-1940s, following the destruction of the
(Muslim) Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. The destruction
of the of the Ottoman Empire also meant the destruction of the Sunni
Muslim Caliphate in Istanbul, Turkey. Thus, during the Awakening
era, a primary cultural goal became a resurgence of Sunni Islam and
the restoration of the Caliphate.

(This is a subject for another time, but an apparent element of the
objective of Sunni resurgence has been a substantial increase in the
birth rate. This is evident by the fact that, in the last few
decades, the birth in Sunni Muslim countries has been roughly twice
as great as other countries. However, although I've asked a number
of Muslims to confirm that a high birth rate has been a Muslim
objective related to the restoration of the Caliphate, none have been
able to do so.)

During the 1930s-1940s, right in the Sunni Muslim awakening eras, the
European Jews flocked to the Palestine region, and were in conflict
with the Palestinians. When the size of the Jewish Holocaust in
Germany became known, a horrified world agreed to partition Palestine
and create the state of Israel on May 15, 1948. Since then,
Palestinians call this day Al Naqba - Catastrophe Day.

Even though George Bush didn't get his history exactly right, he is
right to emphasize the importance of Awakenings. It's during
Awakenings that powerful attitudes and goals are adopted by large
masses of people. The Awakening era is like the societal earthquake
that launches the tsunami that arrives 30-40 years later in the form
of a crisis war. That tsunami is almost at our shores today, and can't
be stopped.

Conflict risk level for next 6-12 months as of: 9-Feb-2006

W. Europe

1

Arab Israeli

3

Russia Caucasus

2

Kashmir

2

China

2

North Korea

2

Financial

3

Bird flu

3

Key:1=Low risk2=Med3=High4=Active

Generational Dynamics predicts that there'll be a "clash of
civilizations" world war, pitting the Muslim world (with China as an
ally) against the Western World (with Russia and India as allies).
This war was launched by events and social changes that occurred
decades ago (and, some would say, centuries ago). Nothing can be
done to prevent it today.

Although we can't predict the scenario leading up to that war,
current events make it clear that Palestine and Israel will be the
epicenter (or at least AN epicenter) of that war. This really
shouldn't be surprising, since Palestine and Jerusalem have been the
epicenter of many "world wars" for millennia.

However, it would be a mistake to assume that Israel is the only
issue leading to a world war. America actually has signed a large
number of mutual defense treaties with other countries as well. These
include agreements with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the ANZUS
agreement with Australia and New Zealand, and the NATO agreement with
all of Europe, as well as with Israel.

More and more, I've been telling people lately the following:
Treasure the time you have left, and use it to prepare yourself,
your family, your community and your nation.

We can't predict the time frame for this war, but with the
aggressiveness of Iran in its intent to eliminate Israel, with China's
increasing economic instability, with Russia's increasing social
instability, and with the the world population's increasing anxiety
and fear over violence and terrorism, the time cannot be too far off.